Previews

Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party

Ubisoft creates the first game you can control with your ass. Well, the first videogame, anyway.

Spiffy:

Excellent use of the Wii Remote and Balance Board; who doesn't want more of the crazy rabbids?

Iffy:

Not all the mini-games will be as fun; lacking the Balance Board can make the game less entertaining.

The Raving Rabbids are indispensable to the success of the Wii, so much that we were expecting to see them mentioned at the Ubisoft conference during E3. What we were not expecting, however, was to see Laurent Detoc, President of the North American division of the company, sitting his backside on a Balance Board and attempting a fast slide down a snowy mountain on the back of an unwilling cow. The outcome was so hilarious that it convinced us to immediately check out the new Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party, a game that earns the bizarre distinction of "being controlled with your ass."

This definition, however, is not completely true. TV Party requires the use of the Balance Board in only about 30% of the 50 mini-games included, and for many of them players will have to stand on the board instead of sitting on it. Those who don't own a Balance Board will still be able to play every mini-game with the sole use of the Wii Remote and the Nunchuck, although the controls could be slightly less precise. Also good news is that the game is perfectly suitable for both left- and right-handed players.

TV Party doesn't have that much of a plot, as is to be expected in a Raving Rabbids title. This time the rabbids have invaded Rayman's TV and they control channels with names like Music, Brain, Movie and Extreme. Each of the channels opens up several mini-games based on precision, speed or rhythm, depending on the designated area.

The first mini-game we tried, "Beestie Boarding", was the same one we saw at the Ubisoft conference. We sat on the Balance Board, waiting for it to calibrate to the weight of our backside, and then we started sliding down the mountain, leaning forward to accelerate and backward to slow down. Side movements, executed by shifting our weight left and right, were necessary to pass through the flags and to avoid the occasional snowballs that other players were throwing at us in an attempt to sabotage our performance. When in mid-air, we had to move the Wii Remote as shown by the arrows on-screen, interacting with our cow and creating graceful poses such as "Da Vinci Air" and "Backslide Cheesy Pogo."

The second mini-game we tried was "Incredible But Stupid!," a skysurf session among the asteroids. Riding our Balance Board as a surfboard, we had to hit a series of luminous rings and avoid random flying objects. Again, our teammates could sabotage us by shaking their Wii Remotes violently in order to shoot plasma rays at us. The last mini-game we played was "Dance," a physical version of the dancing rabbids we saw in the previous Wii installments in the series. After picking one of the seven available songs, we had to strike poses at the right time, while avoiding the other players. With up to four dancers in the same living room, Ubisoft guarantees chaos and fun for everybody.

As usual, Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party promises to be a hit among party-game lovers. Not all of the mini-games will likely be as fun, but what we've seen so far makes us expect more precise controls than in the past and a wider use of the human body. TV Party is due out in November on Wii and DS.